


breadcrumbs

by bluecarrot



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:11:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/bluecarrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander wants to die.<br/>Burr does not want to let him.</p><p>trigger warnings for suicidality obviously apply.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written 9/4/2016.

 

 

 

"No, _no_ \--"

Alex does it anyway.

Spin and _whirr_ and _click_ and Burr almost screams aloud

 

Hamilton holds out the gun. His hand is disturbingly steady. "Here. Your turn."

"Fuck you, Alex. I won't play these games with you."

But his eyes are calm; he expected this. "I'll try all six on myself, then." And he turns the barrel against his forehead again and 

_click._

 

Burr grabs at the revolver and is shocked (as he always is) at the weight. The reality of it. Such a small form to carry so much hell -- but it shouldn't surprise him, should it? when Alex is the same way. "I'm keeping this. I'm going to call fucking 9-1-1, and then I'm going to call Washington and he'll _fire_ you for being so reckless --"

"I stopped being afraid of disapproval when I was _fourteen_. When are you going to learn that one for yourself?"

" _Fuck you_." He hates being reduced to this, hates how both rage and love are equally helpless and meaningless against the steady wave of Alex's pain -- that ocean moving inland.

The gun is heavy and still and cold, a fine machine.

He presses the open muzzle to his temple and stares at his lover.

Alex licks his lips.

"Cheers," says Burr, and pulls the trigger on another empty chamber.

 

Alex reaches out.

Burr is nerveless boneless raw. Angry. "Don't you dare. Don't you  _dare._ You want to play a game? You got it. But you're going to talk to me. Hear me? We'll do this. One question. One answer. One pull."

Neither moves.

"Say _Yes_ or I call the police and let them haul you away in cuffs. You know I'll do it. They'll 302 you. Do you want that again? The nurses, the pills, the awful green walls --"

"Let me _alone_ , Aaron --"

"No. _No._ You want to die? Sure. Go ahead. I'm about done with your bullshit anyway. But you're going to talk to me first."

Hamilton laughs -- hard, without humor. He settles back on his sitbones and rubs his arms, like he's cold.

Burr is sweating. He stays leaning forward, fingers covering over the metal, until Hamilton says --

"Fine. I get a shot, I answer a question."

Relief is as heady as fear and it's hard to talk. "You've had two tries already. So tell me. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to die? Where do you think that leaves _me_?"

Alex shakes his head. "You know the answer already. How many times have we gone over it?  _I don't want to be alive anymore._ This -- everything -- everything hurts. It _hurts_. And it isn't stopping _._ It's the same thing over and over and it won't ever end. I know it won't end. Am I supposed to just -- be patient? Just wait for it? Wait for _what?_ " His eyes are steady and without focus, empty of everything but grieving. "I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you."

Burr sits back. Says, quiet: "Alex. I want you to live."

"Not a question." Hamilton takes the gun and squeezes the trigger and squeezes his eyes shut too --

 

Burr's scream dies in his throat.

He covers his mouth and his eyes and tries to keep on breathing. "Why don't my feelings matter to you?"

"They matter. But I matter, too. Do you want the next shot, or should I take it?"

"You're behind two questions."

"No. Only one. I answer when I pull the trigger; I ask the question when you pull."

"Sure. Whatever. Ask." He fumbles for the gun. Shuts his eyes. _Alex._

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I love you," says Burr, and he puts the barrel to his temple and at the last moment does what he didn't do before, should have done before: twists out his wrist.

A single round fires in the air.

 

He drops the gun. He's shaking. His ear is ringing, humming, buzzing and he almost _died_ and he's laughing aloud...

 

In the dark silence of their room they now lie side by side and facing. Alex's pupils are spread vastly open, he is soft and unsleeping, he smells of new-cut grass and wildflowers and saltwater.

 _Why are you doing this_ he'd said, meaning _Why are you fighting for me Why do you love me Why do you stay_

The moon curves back down towards the horizon as Burr kisses him again and again like a trail of breadcrumbs, a path to lead him home.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 09 January 2017.

"I'd like to see Alex Hamilton, please."

The woman at the window regarded him through the glass. "Are you a relative?"

"I'm his brother."

She considered him a moment, and he knew what she saw -- he knew how Alexander looked and how he looked, and he felt the tension radiating off him like electricity no matter how he tried to hide it. But he'd borrowed Alex's accessories for this expedition: his favorite green hoodie, his earnest, open expression. He wished he could keep the man as close. He smiled. He deflected the open question on her face. "I know -- we don't look much alike. I'm adopted. My name's Aaron Burr." He tried not to fidget. Calm, calm. It was familiar here -- pale green walls, the scent of industrial cleaners. Quietness. He'd been here before. But Alex would have written down his name for visitation, wouldn't he? Surely he would have. _My brother, Aaron._

"Room 217," she finally said. "The guard will take you in."

 

Alex looked the same, they'd even let him keep his clothes this time,  but he smelled different -- no fancy shampoos and special bath-bombs here. Burr sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and tried not to throttle him. Probably a mental hospital would frown on expressions of violence. "When were you going to tell me?"

"What would you do about it?" said Alexander.

"I could have driven you here, for one thing."

"That's not what I want -- wanted." He stumbled over it.

Burr took his hand. It was cold, but Alex didn't pull away. "Let's go," he said.

 

As soon as they were outside Burr gave took off the hoodie and gave it over.

Alex smiled a little. "I thought you were stealing my threads."

"It looks better on you."

"Is that a race thing?" said Alex, tilting his head to watch a swarm of birds spire upwards, shift direction as one, and settle in a bare tree.

Burr crossed his arms. He couldn't stop wanting to hurt this man. _Shake_ him until the sense came out of wherever it was hiding. "It's an Alexander thing. One of many. Are you ready? Are we going?"

"We're going," but he stood still until Burr took him by the arm.

 

It was too cold to roll down the windows, even for a crazy man, so Alex just leaned his head against the glass and tucked his hands inside his sleeves. Burr looked over from the highway and took evaluation: Alex's eyes were grieving but his mouth was more mobile and now he was chewing on the cord of the hoodie. "Thank you. I missed this. They would've taken this away," he said. "If I survived. No cords. No ropes. No shoelaces. So I didn't want to wear it. Didn't want to lose it."

"Freedom looks good on you. Are you ever going to stop giving me heart attacks, Alex? When I woke up and you were gone --"

"I'm still here."

"When you were gone," said Burr, "you had to know what I thought. And it was true."

Alex rested his head against the window and shut his eyes and didn't bother to reply.

Burr said: "I love you."

Alex said: "So that's why you thought it was okay to call the cops? That's your excuse?"

Burr reminded himself to calm down. He felt the urge to turn the car into the guardrail. Into ongoing traffic. It was unbearable. Is that how Alex felt all the time? "If you'd prefer I take you back, just say the word."

Silence.

"When I woke up --"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"We're going to talk."

Alex said, voice shaking: "In group, we don't have to talk if we don't want to talk."

"You can go back to group, if that's what you want." Blunt scissors and crayons; he'd seen some of that _therapy_ on the walls. "I'll even pay for it. When you're out, when you're with me, it's your job to talk."

"I don't want to talk."

"Then we're going back."

"No."

"Yes." Burr put on the turn signal and the tick-tick-tick-tick was loud in the quiet; he checked carefully and changed lanes when there was an opening and he had put on the signal again to exit the highway

when Alex said "I should have woken you up." And Burr drove past the exit, and Alex was grateful, so he said: "I didn't want to wake you. You're so peaceful when you sleep. You need to get more sleep."

Burr was never going to feel safe closing his eyes again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 2/1/2017.

 

 

 

 

It happens like this: Alex wakes up. Dawn's light is cold light, and thin; filtered through low clouds meaning rain and the bare January tree-limbs, the light grows less tangible. In summer he can fill a glass with sun and drink it down in the evening, standing on the balcony, looking over the lights of the city. Summer. Late summer. It's cricket-song and humidity thick as a blanket and twice as warm; it's laughing at Aaron when he complains.

Mangoes.

Summer is impossible and mangoes are even further away, not even a dream. The nearest thing is to burrow nearer to Burr, length against length, breathing in the sweet dry scent of his skin. He's still sleeping, this Aaron, and he is beautiful and dear.

I love you. I love you. I love you. -- It's like the motion of his breath; it's that intimate, that automatic. It exists. Even under the weight of winter and his own grief, it is steady and real. Sometimes it's the only other real thing.

\-- How do you know you're alive?

\-- Feel the water splash over your hands when you turn on the tap; feel the breath choke in your lungs when you want it to drag still; shut your eyes and taste again the sweat-tang of skin at the back of Aaron's neck. He is real. He is alive, even if Alex is not --

\-- doesn't want to be --

His hands are cold. He presses them against Burr anyway, pulling in his hip against Alex's hip. He hasn't wanted anything more than his own cold hand for months now, and Aaron (I love you I love you) is uncomplaining, even when Alex jerks off in bed next to him. He lets him use him for these things. He lets him do so much.

It all hurts. The arguments they don't have burn under Alex's skin and it's worse because Aaron doesn't even _try_ to hate him --

He's twinging-heavy now again. Shameful. He presses against Burr, experimentally rocking forward.

How strange it is to have a body; how awful it is. Held tight and captive by all these things -- needing to take food in and let shit out, needing sleep, needing to wake, need and need and need in a dull circle.

And at the center of it, Aaron.

_I need you,_ Burr had said during one argument.  _Goddammit, I need you to fight._

Alex shifts upward. Delicious. Presses his mouth to Burr's shoulder. Even better. The twitching is turning to an ache.

This is what he needs -- what he wants -- if he's required to want anything at all. (Whether or not that question is under debate is the topic of debate.)

He wants. Burr. My thorn, my rough edge. My Aaron. I love you.

Without Burr, he'd be gone: that's no question at all. For better or for worse, he'd be gone.

Burr smells like summer. He is yellowness, he is sweetness, he is deeply asleep (I love you) and he worries so much, too much, far more than Alex is worth worrying over -- so Alex stays alive to reassure him --

\-- because this love is a great leaden weight of guilt, and no way to rub it off to completion.

I love you, he says without saying it into that seashell of an ear, listening. Perfect ear. Perfect Burr. I love you. Your willingness, your patience. My Aaron. As solid and real as the pain, and sometimes -- too often -- he is the only other reality -- a light-house blinking a steady beacon -- visible every time Alex comes up from the waves. I love you.

He puts his head against Burr's skin and hears the ocean.


	4. the river

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex, no (Alex yes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for my darlings, not in this order: Jay, Alex, Kelsey.  
> William. 
> 
> written 11 May 2017.

* * *

Wake.

Dark.

Dark is alright. Dark is good. You can pretend, in the dark. You can listen for another body breathing shifting in sleep sturdy tenacious heart moving blood through that well-loved form, long grasping fingers and slumping shoulders and all the other places, tender and sweet, smelling like wildflowers --

You can't smell anything.

Keep your eyes shut, Burr.

Keep still. If you hold still enough you can sleep again, maybe. Sometimes it works that way. Sometimes you can sleep and dream.

 

Not tonight.

 

 _Practice,_ your therapist said. _Nothing feels natural the first few times. How did you learn to write? Practice._

You shook your head. Bad analogy. You didn't ever _learn_  how to write. The pen was natural in your fingers, like you'd been missing it all your life until then

like you feel now

missing something elemental.

 

"I can't live without writing," Alex had said. He'd been crying.

"Maybe it'll come back--"

Shaking his head and shaking his head. "You don't understand --"

"I do understand."

"You wouldn't ask me to do this," he had said, "if you understood."

He was right.

 

 _Practice,_  said your therapist. _Aaron, it will get easier._

You don't want it to get easier.

You nodded anyway. Sure, doc.

 

\-- hold off crying until you make it to the car --

 

If you hold still, if you hold your breath until your throat burns and sparkles come on in the edges of your vision, you can almost see Alex in the passenger seat. He's turned away. He's mad. He doesn't want to look at you.

_Look at me. Talk to me. I love you._

He only says the same old thing: _If you understood --_

 

In the darkness, moonlight comes down through the bare trees.

 

"I love you," you had said, helpless and hopeless, needing him. Drowning in it. "I need you to stay."

"You're very selfish," he'd said right back.

You are selfish. You don't care. "Tell me you love me."

"Burr --"

_"Tell me."_

He kissed you instead. There wasn't any tenderness in it. He tasted of anger and salt. Emptiness. Like he was already gone.

 

\-- wake, to find the bed sticky with his blood; wake to see the light on in the bathroom and the door locked; wake to empty empty empty emptiness again and again. Wake to your own nerves already wire-taut and your throat dry from worry: Alex?

You wake and it's over.

 

You stand in line at the shipping store, buy a pile of boxes and three rolls of plastic tape. "Moving?" says the cashier.

_Yes._

"Stressful." 

_You have no idea._

 

Box up his things: a pile of books, thirteen hoodies, faded falling-apart Chuck Taylors. Strip down the bed ruthlessly. Wash his scent out of the sheets and pillows.

Do not linger over this.

 

You'll still find hair ties in random places, lost and forgotten under furniture.

You thought you were done with crying.

 

Wake in the dark

in silence

wake to stillness and loss and pain. _Alex._

No.

Not anymore. There is no Alex any more.

 

The worst is this: he is gone and you still need him. You need to tell him things. You need him to hear you. No one has ever listened like he did, alert with every piece of skin and hair and oversized sweater, foot jiggling restless all the time. You make a pot of coffee and drink it all looking outside at the rain.

You go on talking to him all the time.  _I miss you. You need to be here. You need to stay._

Alex is there/not-there. He is looking out to someplace between the raindrops. _If you understood how I feel on those meds,_ he says, _you'd tell me to go._

You say: _If you understood how I feel without you here, you'd come back._

Impasse.

 

Wake. Your heartbeat is loud and raw. _Come home_ it says. You're not sure who is speaking, or to whom.

 

There is a walled river in your city, vibrantly alive with spray-paint; there are pills, guns, belts, razors, and gasoline.

On the other side are an unknown amount of years to go on alone.

On the other side is Alex, waiting impatient for you. It isn't a question, he is solid and steady and real as breathing, impenetrable as all the choices you have to make, biting his lip because he cannot (now) speak.

 

Is there love on the other side, Alexander? Is there writing? Which would you rather have?

Don't answer that.

 

Wake. Sunrise. He is gone, gone

and your need is still alive in your chest, that familiar old recklessness, a dark insatiable creature prowling low and long _(come home come home come home come home come home)_

What would you give for him to come back? What dark spell would do it? The river pulls at you, humming long and low. _Come home._ It's dark as dreaming, dark as eyes. Drowning hurts. The question is: will it hurt more than this?

 _The question is_ (says Alex)  _what d'you want, Burr?_

 _Tell me how it feels to decide,_ you say to him. _Tell me where the stopping-place is, so I'll know when I feel it too._

 _It feels like going asleep_ (he says, silent in the silence)  _and it feels like waking up._

 

You want to sleep.

You want to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What are you waiting for? What do you stall for?


	5. the bridge.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She won't look up at him. "Why did he kill himself?"  
> "He was very sad."  
> "Didn't he love you, too?"  
> "I -- yes."  
> "Do you want to talk about this?"  
> "No."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "the river goes on & on, and the sea that divides us is a temporary one"  
> for William.  
> if i've done anything valuable in this life, it's been to make you proud of me.

Burr is working, head down and focused. 

Theo climbs on the bed. "What's this?"

He goes still when he's startled, he always has, and he is motionless now. "You've been in my things. What did I tell you about going into my things?"

"Ask for permission first."

"Did you ask?"

"No. Are you mad with me?"

"No." But he's shaken. "Don't -- don't play with that, please. It's very old." About twenty years old, actually. That's a long time to a child. Of course, that's almost triple her lifetime; he supposes that is a good definition for  _very old_.

"What is it?"

"Just a bookmark. A ticketstub. A memento. It belonged to -- it was -- I went there with a friend."

She's flicking it between her fingers and he has to control himself; he wants to reach over and take it out of her hands. "Why'd you keep it?"

"He kept it."

"Who was it?"

"A friend. Theo --"

"You're upset," she said, and gave him the paper. "I'm sorry."

"It startled me, that's all." Having it in his hands again grounds him, centers him. "I haven't seen this in a long time."

"What was his name?"

"Alexander," he says. The name fills the air between them. He tries to joke: "I almost named you _Alex_. Your mother wouldn't have it. She's a smart woman."

"I like that name, Alex. Why didn't you name me that? Why wouldn't she let you? What happened to him?"

"He died."

"Why?"

"He -- he killed himself. Theo, don't talk about this with your ma."

"She didn't like him?"

"She never met him."

"Why doesn't she like him?"

He looks at his daughter, carefully considering his words. "Because when I met her, I was still in love with him."

"I thought he was dead."

"He was."

"Oh," she says. Stares at him. "I'm glad you met ma and fell in love with her and had me."

"Me too," he says, sincerely.

She wriggles off the bed and seems about to leave but doesn't, shifting weight from one foot to the other. Finally she says: "Do you miss him?"

"It's been nineteen years," says Burr.

Theo tilts her head. She can hear evasion, she's the child of lawyers, and he's evaded her quite a bit tonight -- but she loves him, too. So she only says "I'll ask for permission next time."

"Thank you," he says.

And when she's gone he puts the stub a little bit away from him on the bed, trying to find his focus again.

Every so often he looks over, to make sure it hasn't disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> -"302" is the term for involuntary commitment to a mental hospital
> 
> -suicide attempts are illegal where i am and therefore end with handcuffs and arrest
> 
> *
> 
> make me regret the day i was born  
> @littledeconstruction on tumblr


End file.
